Where can you find the best teachers?

Where can you find the best teachers?

By Jayne Ellspermann

The best teachers are right in front of us!

Several years ago, the school where I was principal was struggling to find teachers, especially in hard to fill positions like math, science, and special education.  We had a building full of bright students who we were doing a great job preparing for countless professions. Teaching was not one of them.

Teachers are often the first profession students encounter and see in action.  When you ask students in elementary school what they want to be when they grow up many of them will tell you they want to be a teacher.  Years go by and those same students move on to different careers, often because we do such a great job in our schools of promoting other careers.

Every day I saw potential teachers in our classrooms, and knew with a few changes we could create an outstanding teaching force with the students in our school. 

There were things we needed to do to ensure that we could develop an environment that would draw students to education. First, we needed to address the culture of our school.  We had to ask ourselves the hard question; if students were looking at our teachers, would they see someone they would like to become after college?  The reality is we have hundreds of students sitting in our classrooms shadowing possible career models every day.  Educators are not the best recruiters, in fact, teachers often discourage students from pursuing the very career they have chosen. Having teachers sharing positive attitudes toward their profession gives students something to aspire to.  Having those same teachers invite students to become educators is extremely powerful. 

Teaching is a career of relationships.  Given the demands of accountability, scarce resources, and rapidly changing expectations, positive relationships with students and with other teachers are the key to success and happiness for educators.

Providing time for students and teachers to interact outside the classroom enabled us to show our students that the education profession is more than the subject you teach, it is positively impacting young people. At our school having an unstructured hour in the middle of the day through Power Hour allows teachers the time to develop positive relationships with students.  It also gives students the opportunity to support other students through study and tutoring sessions.

 

Student clubs, teams, and activities celebrate teachers by taking a day to do something nice for all the teachers and support staff on campus.  It is great when the Criminal Justice club provides coffee and donuts one day, the National Honor Society provides breakfast on another day, and other teams and organizations take a day to celebrate teachers. Different groups personally bring apples, notes, or hand-crafted pottery to our teachers and staff members.  This brings our students closer to our teachers, and it creates a positive environment for our teachers and shows our students that teachers are appreciated. 

Establishing a culture that supports teaching is just one part of creating our community’s next generation of educators.  There must also be a deliberate focus on developing students as teachers. 

We implemented a Teacher Preparation program where students receive instruction on curriculum, instruction, literacy, human growth and development, and instructional technology. Students are given the opportunity to teach a class, and many serve as tutors for teachers during our Power Hour.  Students also serve as reading buddies at the elementary school before school and are available to provide support to our local middle school.  These hands-on opportunities for our students to experience supporting and helping students gets them hooked on wanting to make a difference in students’ lives.  Students are given the opportunity to be a member of the Florida Future Educators of American and earn industry certification as a para professional which provides them with the credentials to work in a school upon graduation from high school. 

Students in the Teacher Preparation program are encouraged to participate in the campus Early College program where they can earn their Associate of Arts degree without leaving campus.  This support for a diverse, economically disadvantaged school community has students completing up to two years of college while they are in high school which puts them well on their way to completing their education to become a teacher. 

One of those students was our valedictorian who completed her Associate of Arts degree and returned two years later to teach math in our school.  We hired the salutatorian of another graduating class to teach chemistry.  We hired a former football star to teach math and work with our special education population and one of our dance students returned to be our dance teacher. Since we started this program we have seen dozens of students return to our school and other schools in our district to begin their teaching career.

The teacher shortage is a reality.  Without providing the right opportunities and environment students will not leave high school with their eye on becoming a teacher.  School leaders must seize the opportunity to make education an attractive option for students and deliberately make teaching a career option.  It will not only lead students to consider education as a career, it will make their school a better place to work and learn.